Rift
by Dee Moyza
Summary: As Time Compression begins and the heroes charge to the future to face Ultimecia, Caraway delves into his past. In-game, one-shot. [Rated K-plus for thematic material]


_(Disclaimer: This work is intended for entertainment purposes only and its creation does not imply ownership of the Final Fantasy franchise, characters, or affiliated intellectual property.)_

Caraway stared out his office window and watched the lights of the city come on, one after the other. The worst thing about losing his job was the time it left him. The sheer number of hours in a day, with nothing to fill them besides idle worry. In the immediate aftermath of the failed mission, at least he'd had a goal - find Rinoa, bring her back to where he could protect her - but he'd failed at that as well, and as the hours dragged into weeks, he heard no more from her.

He'd retained a few informants - loyalty was easy to buy, for the right amount of money and secrets - but all of them had lost her trail. Caraway knew she had traveled with the group from Balamb - the one led by that strange and serious boy - but since the clash between Galbadia and Balamb Gardens, she had been seen only once. A man from Fisherman's Horizon reported seeing a girl who looked like Rinoa, unconscious and draped over the shoulder of a young man who was headed to Esthar via the abandoned railroad. But he knew nothing more.

Unconscious? How? And why was the boy taking her to Esthar? Caraway demanded answers from his informants, but was met only with open-palm apologies. His worry intensified when the red glow appeared on the horizon and long-silent radios crackled to life. He thought he heard her name once, in an intercepted transmission from Esthar, and he heard the word "sorceress" bandied about afterward, but nothing could be verified, and his concern compounded, hardened like a stone lodged in his chest.

His house was quiet now. Aside from his regular staff and a handful of personal guards, no one spoke to him. He was not surprised. He'd been dismissed from his position and stripped of all honors; he'd effectively been erased from the public consciousness.

Caraway watched the red stripe on the horizon fade into darkness and listened to the clock on his desk tick away the evening. He thought now, as he did when he felt lost and nostalgic, of the Galbadian army and where they might be. _It's been silent on their end as well,_ he mused. _Perhaps their flashy new commander isn't panning out_. He smiled at the thought. He was not above a little schadenfreude.

The stillness so enveloped him that he did not notice at first when his clock stopped ticking. He glanced at it, gave it a shake, and had just turned it over to check the battery when he noticed movement from the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw the edges of his office shimmering. The effect resembled the heat waves that rose from the asphalt in the middle of summer, and he blinked and shook his head to clear his vision. But the shimmering remained, encroaching further on the space around him.

It warped everything it touched. Caraway watched as the door opposite him seemed to liquefy, streaming down the wall like wet paint. He looked to his right at the portrait on the wall and recoiled when he saw the woman's features so disfigured, melting from the canvas - melting, but collecting nowhere. What was happening?

 _I must be hallucinating_ , he thought. _I am tired, that is all. I should go lie down._ He rose and stepped to the side of his desk but lost his balance as the floor softened beneath him, sucking at his ankles. He grasped the desk and stared at his whitened knuckles. _What's wrong? Am I dying? I can't, not yet. I need to see Rinoa again, I need to know where she is, that she is well._

"What are you so afraid of?"

Caraway jerked his head up at the sound of Rinoa's voice. She was standing at the other end of his office, in jeans and a light jacket, her hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She had her hands on her hips and her chin angled upward, challenging him.

"It's not safe out there." Caraway looked over his shoulder and saw himself. He was several years younger, still wearing his uniform. This version of himself walked toward his daughter, and as he passed, Caraway felt himself drawn along.

"You can't keep me locked up forever, you know," Rinoa went on. "I'm not a prisoner, I'm your daughter! I've done nothing wrong."

"I didn't say you had."

"Then why are you punishing me?"

"I'm not. I'm protecting you. The world is dangerous. Life is dangerous. I don't want you to get hurt."

She glowered at him, eyes half-hidden beneath her bangs. "At least then I would know I'm alive."

Caraway remembered this exchange. It had happened about two years ago. Rinoa had wanted to travel abroad alone - a silly notion put into her head by her tutor at the time, who was subsequently fired - and Caraway had forbidden it. Even now, he did not regret his decision; she was too young, too naive, too vulnerable to be on her own. He felt his arm extend toward her, offered by his past self. "Rinoa."

She shrank from him. "Leave me alone. Just let me live!"

As she uttered those hurtful words, her voice became distorted, and her image faded and grew distant, until it disappeared through the melting door.

Caraway pulled back his trembling hand. _Why am I seeing this? This happened years ago. What is going on?_ He received no answer, save for the shifting of the room. His office walls fell away, and he was standing in a swath of sunlight streaming through one of the large windows in the parlor. Rinoa sat at the piano there, a long braid hanging over her shoulder, no more than twelve years old. Her fingers danced along the keys, playing a melancholy tune, while she stared beyond the piano, eyes fixed on the painting on the opposite wall.

 _She played well,_ Caraway thought, _but not as well as her mother. I think she knew that._ Another version of himself shook his head to clear the thought.

Rinoa allowed her gaze to wander, and it eventually landed on him. She locked eyes with him, a crease forming between her brows, her jaw tightening. Without warning, she raised her left hand and brought it down hard on the keys as she kept playing the tune with her right. She did it again and again, never breaking her gaze, the other half of the melody never faltering.

The discordant sound set Caraway's nerves on edge, and her defiant expression drove the bile into his throat. But he would not give her the satisfaction of seeing him angry. He folded his arms across his chest and stared at her. _She did not care to play after her mother died. I forced her to. I think I wanted to keep Julia alive, even in a small way, through her._

This scene soon faded as well, and Caraway sighed. _I would like to see her happy. Has her life really been that miserable?_ Around him, the parlor transformed into the library just long enough for him to see her storm out and slam the door behind her. His surroundings shifted once more, but this time, the floor beneath Caraway's feet became solid, and when the visual disturbances retreated, Caraway's breath caught in his throat.

He didn't have to guess where he was this time. He remembered it all: the hallway streaked with rays of afternoon light; the roses in the vase, still fresh, their subtle perfume hanging in the air; the vase itself, still unbroken, glittering on a table beside the window. He heard voices outside, conjured up the image of his guards backed against the heavy front doors, fending off an army of suited men and women wielding pens and pads, cameras and microphones.

Most of all, he remembered seeing her door ajar, golden sunlight spilling out from the room beyond, tiny motes of dust dancing in its warmth. He could hear her mumbling to herself — reading, perhaps, or playing with her dolls — her quiet singsong floating above the din outside.

He stood very still at the end of the hallway for what seemed an eternity. He didn't want to go into her room. He didn't want to relive this memory at all. He had just wanted to see his daughter — but why were these painful memories of her all he had been granted? He breathed deep and forced his feet to move. _If I must do this,_ he thought, _I will do it differently._ But as he pushed her door open, the strings of the past seized his body, guiding his movements and reducing him to a helpless spectator of a story he had long ago written.

Stepping into the room, he found Rinoa lying on her stomach, turning the pages of a picture book. Two dark pigtails, secured by elastic bands, framed her face and spilled onto the book. She looked up at him and smiled. "Hi Daddy!" Then she turned to the window and the noise outside and wrinkled her nose. "Are the roast-tasters back? They're so loud."

Despite his grief, Caraway allowed himself a smile. "Those aren't protesters, sweetie," he said, walking to the window and drawing the curtains. He flicked on her lamp, then turned on the small stereo on top of her bookshelf and listened for a moment to nursery rhymes being sung over gentle strings and piano. "They're reporters."

"Oh. Did they come to talk to Mama?"

Caraway swallowed. "Something like that." He waved his hand toward the window, as if shooing away an insect. "But you don't need to worry about them. Enjoy your book." He sat down in the pink upholstered chair Julia had loved, where she had nursed Rinoa as a baby, had read to her and sung to her in a gossamer voice so different from the one everyone else knew.

"I'm finished with this one," Rinoa said, flipping the back cover over with a satisfying _thup_. She rose and smoothed the wrinkles from her blouse, then walked to her bookcase. She replaced the book and studied her collection for a while, finally deciding on a book with a bright red cover. She pulled it out and approached Caraway, clambering onto his lap, settling back against his chest before opening the book across her little outstretched legs. "I'll read to you, Daddy. Listen."

Caraway listened to her for long minutes as she followed the words with her finger, stumbled over those unfamiliar to her, and made up the story in places where her reading skills failed her. All the while, he kept the knuckles of one hand pressed hard against his mouth, trying to stem the sobs that rose as his throat constricted. When she finished, and he could not face her silence, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, tight and hard, crying quietly into her hair.

Rinoa did not immediately notice his distress. She squirmed out of his embrace, giggling, and returned to her bookshelf. She replaced the book, considered the others there, then turned to him.

"When's Mama coming home? I want to read to her, too."

Caraway wanted to freeze this moment, wanted to safeguard her innocence a little longer. Even if he had to shoulder the grief alone, he would be satisfied so long as she did not hurt. As slippery as time seemed to have become, he believed for an instant that might be possible. But once again, the shadows of what had already been overpowered him, and he felt his heart tighten as his past self opened his mouth to speak.

"Rinnie," he said, as tenderly as he could without his voice breaking, "I need to tell you something. Mama ... Mama isn't ... she isn't coming back."

He watched her face transform. Her eyebrows gathered in confusion at first, then fear crept into her features. Her eyes darted from side to side, and soon her entire head followed suit.

"No," she whispered. "No, no, no. She is _too_ coming back. Where else would she go?" She spoke louder, her pitch rising to the edge of hysteria. "She has to come back. She loves me. She said we're gonna practice piano together tonight."

Caraway reached out and placed his trembling hands on her shoulders. "Rinnie, she's not coming back," he repeated. "You understand, don't you? She's not coming here, she's not going anywhere else. She's ..." _Don't say it,_ Caraway begged his former self. _Don't do this. She'll run. She'll run right into that crowd of reporters, her grief will be there for everyone to see, for everyone to buy and sell and own. Don't deny her her privacy to mourn._

But he didn't need to say it. Rinoa understood, and shook her head more violently. "I don't believe you," she cried. "She's not dead! She can't be! Why are you saying so?" She turned to run.

 _Don't let her go!_

His desperation, so much stronger than his sadness and fear, broke the hold of the past on his body, and Caraway reached out to catch her. He meant to grasp her shoulder, but his movements were imprecise and clumsy, and he instead caught hold of one of her pigtails. Her head jerked back and she yelped in pain, then spun around to face him.

 _What have I done?_

Half of her hair hung down around her right shoulder and she held a hand to her scalp. Her dark eyes were filled with hurt and accumulating tears. Before he could speak, Caraway saw those eyes glaze over and her face fall slack as the full weight of what he had told her finally settled in. Her tears flowed and she curled in on herself, arms wrapped tightly around her torso. The sobs came quietly at first, then escalated into howls that sounded as if they had been ripped from her chest.

Caraway began to cry as well, and knelt beside his daughter. "Rinnie," he said, voice quivering, "I'm so sorry. Rinnie ..." He reached out to her, but she raised one thin arm and batted him away.

"Stay away from me! I hate you! I hate you, I hate you, I ha..." Her sentence degenerated into a scream, and she ran from the room.

Caraway rose to follow her, but as he walked toward the door, the now-familiar shimmering returned, devouring the edges of the room. _No, not now! I have to apologize, I have to make this right. I have to be with her now, to protect her._ He pushed forward to the doorway.

Two right feet stepped across the threshold, and two left feet followed. As his surroundings warped and melted, Caraway's past and present selves separated, and he watched the man from twelve years ago stalk down the hallway, calling to his daughter, the sadness in his voice replaced by anger. This Caraway stopped only long enough to seize the vase of roses and fling it against the wall with a guttural roar, before he towered at the top of the stairs and bellowed to Rinoa again.

Then, as suddenly as Caraway's ordeal had begun, it ended. The scene faded, taking with it his own voice, that of his daughter, and the clamor of the reporters outside. The floor undulated beneath Caraway's feet and he slumped down to meet it, defeated.

So that was where it had begun. The first rift. He'd been too weak - no, too foolish, too proud, too broken with grief - to mend it then, and in the intervening years he had looked away as it deepened and spread. It simply hadn't worried him; she could hate him all she wanted, but as long as he kept her close and guarded her from harm, he could bear the whole of her wrath. But he had failed. He had held to her too tightly until the tension broke the final thread between them, and now he faced the chasm alone, not knowing where she was, how she was, if she was even still alive.

The ground solidified beneath him, and he became aware, in degrees, of the fibers of the carpet under his hands, the smell of wood polish, and the distant cacophony of distressed voices.

He opened his eyes and saw his desk, the clock upon it ticking once more.

 _What the hell just happened?_

Someone pounded on his door, calling to him. "Sir! Sir, are you all right in there?"

Caraway recognized his guard's voice. He swallowed hard to clear the lump that remained in his throat and stood up. "I'm fine. Come in."

The guard entered. "Sir, the city is in chaos. What just happened?"

"I have no idea." Caraway shook his head more vigorously than he intended to in front of the guard. He looked out the window but saw only the city lights in the distance and the grounds of his own estate, incongruously serene in the moonlight. He drew himself up and cleared his throat. "As for the city," he continued, sounding more composed now, "appeasing the populace is no longer my problem. Where is the military?"

"Nowhere to be found, sir."

Caraway smirked. "And their dashing young leader?"

"Likewise." The guard shifted his weight from one leg to the other and clenched and released his fists. "The police know of the situation and are deploying now, but maybe you can help. Perhaps if the people saw a familiar face, they might be reassured." The guard shrugged.

Caraway sighed. "Very well. Prepare my car, I will be out shortly."

The guard left, and Caraway leaned against his desk, closing his eyes. He became aware of a tickling sensation on his right hand, and looked down. Looped around his last three fingers, a light blue elastic band pressed into his skin, trailing strands of dark hair across his palm.

\- END -


End file.
